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1

One big ass mistake America.

I'm thinking it should be:

One big ass mistake, America.

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7  
One big ass-mistake America. Source: xkcd.com/37 – Ophiuroid Oct 21 '10 at 6:08
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"A large donkey-error America" -- I like it, Ophiuroid :-) – Antony Quinn Oct 21 '10 at 8:40
The Russian czar once wrote "Pardon not, to Siberia", and his minister who knew that the czar was weak on punctuation corrected him: "Pardon, not to Siberia". – malach Oct 22 '10 at 12:30
@Ralph: never heard of that one, and a few quick Google/Yandex/Rambler searches do not return anything useful. There is, however, a similar (and extremely common) phrase that is used to teach Russian children punctuation: казнить нельзя помиловать. Depending on where you place the comma, you either get казнить, нельзя помиловать ("execute, do not pardon") or казнить нельзя, помиловать ("execute do not, pardon"). Anyhow, I am not aware of any actual czar ever writing that, only czars in Soviet-era fairy-tale movies do it every now and then. – RegDwighт♦ Dec 20 '10 at 13:01
@regDwight - Si non è vero, è ben trovato. I heard it in German, and it might well go back to the phrase you know. – malach Dec 20 '10 at 15:50

2 Answers

up vote 11 down vote accepted

There should be a hyphen between big and ass, as the two words together form an adjective, applied to mistake. (See also Ophiuroid’s comment referring to xkcd).

There should certainly be something before America; I agree with Boofus’s answer on that issue.

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up vote 10 down vote

How it should be punctuated depends on the message. If one is telling America that it has made a big ass mistake, it should have the comma. If one is saying that America is one big ass mistake (perhaps one is British), a colon would probably be best.

One big ass mistake: America.

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1  
Perhaps if one were British, one might spell it 'arse'. – Brian Hooper Oct 23 '10 at 12:44
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@Brian Hooper: One likely would. Does anyone else spell it "ass" or is it only Americans? Does anyone know a website where I could ask that? – J.T. Grimes Oct 23 '10 at 23:21
is donkey synonymous with arse? Arse has ass' component of the buttocks, but not the donkey. Would not "ass" be a wholly separate word? – mfg Oct 27 '10 at 18:29
The context of the question was its meaning as buttocks. I don't believe anyone uses "arse" to mean a donkey (though this site has taught me not to be sure about any of my beliefs about usage). – J.T. Grimes Oct 27 '10 at 21:22

protected by RegDwighт♦ Jul 17 '11 at 14:47

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